Arianne Stark
by CloudyDream
Summary: "I'm not marrying Joffrey Baratheon. Sansa can do that." Wherein Arianne is not a princess; and other scenes from a lifetime. Or, that AU in which Arianne Martell is born a Stark of Winterfell.


**I was **supposed to be writing the happy!Rhaegar story, but Rhaegar is emo and the story doesn't want to be written. So I did this instead. Warning for misogyny and all that comes with it, meaning society pressure, some (hazily descripted) depression and weird medieval sexual experimentation.

BTW, feel free to imagine Arianne Stark's counterpart, Robyn Martell, living down in Dorne; maybe I'll end up writing about him, too.

* * *

**Arianne Stark**

* * *

**0.**

Arianne was fourteen when her father presented her with the marriage offer every woman would dream of.

It wasn't particularly to her taste, and she said so.

_Not fourteen_, she reminded herself._ Almost fifteen. _A woman now, and she would not marry a boy. _Especially_ that _boy_. Arianne saw how the Prince had looked at her, with entitlement and barely-repressed anticipation; and the contempt in the Queen's eyes.

"I don't want to marry Joffrey, Father," she said. A young lady should not talk to her father like this, Septa Mordane always told her, but Arianne had always be bold, and Lord Eddard has never particularly minded.

"He is too young for me," _And Jon says he looks like a girl_. Arianne herself was inclined to agree. The Crown Prince was only two years younger than she was, a boy of twelve and taller than Jon, but he had plump lips and not a hint of hair on his chin; and, at Arianne's age, a boy two years younger was a mere child. "Sansa can marry him," she offered, dismissive.

"At least _she _likes him."

* * *

**-7.**

Arianne Stark was born in Riverrun while her father and grandfather were fighting a war, and it had been no secret that Lady Catelyn wished she had been born a boy.

"Fret not, my Lady," Lord Mormont told her. "The North is gentler to his daughters than the South."

He wasn't the Old Bear then, not yet, but his hair was already more silver than brown; and he had to leave the command of his men to his son Jorah after being wounded during the Battle of the Bells. Lord Jeor had been at Riverrun when Arianne had been born, saw the nervousness in her young mother at having birthed a daughter, and told her of his own sister, and her own little girls.

Lady Catelyn never told him, but she was grateful of his presence.

"Why Arianne?" he asked one day, and Catelyn had blinked in surprise.

"For the story," she told him. "Don't you have it in the North?"

It turned out that they didn't; and thus it fell to Catelyn to tell Lord Mormont about Arianne of the Andals, daughter of the cruel king called Erreg the Kinslayer, and how she had saved her lover from her father's endless dungeons. It wasn't a happy story by any means, but Catelyn had always liked the name. And if the princess of the story ended up an orphan and a jilted lover… well, her daughter was born of a rebel, not a king.

_It's a beautiful name_, her husband wrote back in his next missive; and Catelyn was relieved that he did not seem disappointed.

_A beautiful name indeed_ she told herself, _for a beautiful child_. Little Arianne had Catelyn's blue eyes and her father's mop of dark thick hair, and Catelyn thinks she looks like one of the dolls she used to play with as a child.

They could always have more children, she told herself; and the next one would be a son.

* * *

**-6. **

Their next child was a daughter with Tully colorings, not one hint of the North in her; and to Arianne, who had never seen anyone with fair hair but her mother, Sansa was a continue wonder, and she couldn't understand why Lady Catelyn wasn't happier.

She even asked as much to Uncle Ben, when Maester Luwin would not answer, but Benjen told her it was nothing and she should not worry. And Arianne didn't, because she had nothing to worry about, and went back to playing with Jon around the castle like they always did; but she still couldn't help but notice that they had more and more feasts in Winterfell in the months that followed, Lord Umber with his heir and his sister, Lord Karstark and his party, and even Lady Dustin.

The new Lord Mormont visited as well, with his aunt Maege the she-bear and three of her daughters; and Arianne had suddenly two new playmates, Lyra, who could run even faster than Jon, and Alysane who was older and already knew how to use the wooden sword they stole from Ser Rodrick. Lady Maege had another daughter, Dacey, but she was even older, almost four times Arianne's age, and she spent all her time with Lord Jorah or Lady Maege or even Uncle Ben.

The Mormonts were the last to leave and Arianne never really understood what all the visits had been for; but then one day Father called her and Jon to his solar and told them he would leave to go with the King; and Arianne found herself crying and begging him not to, because she'd been in the crypts and knew what Father really meant.

He was going to war.

* * *

**-5. **

Arianne spent much of her fifth year terrified that her father would die.

"No he won't," Jon told her, almost angrily, the first time she brought it up. "He _won't_."

"Uncle Brandon died in the last war," Arianne said. It was all she could think of. "And Grandfather, and Aunt Lyanna, and Lord Dustin, and –"

"Don't say it," Jon interrupted her. "Father is not going to die."

He was closer to tears than Arianne had ever seen him, and she suddenly felt sorry for Jon. If Father died she would have Mother still, but Jon didn't have a mother. He only had Uncle Benjen, but he'd gone off to war, too. "I'm sorry," she told him. _I'm scared_, she wanted to add, but she didn't. She was a Stark of Winterfell, and Starks were supposed to be _brave_.

She started to pay more attention to Jon after that, to take notice of how he always left a room whenever her mother came in, how he always looked nervous around her. "I don't want to make her angry," Jon told her when she asked; and it was _stupid_, because Mother was never angry, not even with Jon. "She's very sad," he added then, and she knew it was true.

"She shouldn't be."

It was barely a fortnight later that Maester Luwin went looking for Arianne. She was terribly nervous at first, thinking of the stories she'd heard that a single blow from an Ironborn's axe was enough to kill a man; but the maester was smiling.

"You will have a little brother or a little sister, Arianne," he told her, and Arianne didn't know what he was smiling for, because she could still remember that Mother had screamed for a whole day when Sansa had been born.

Later, Mother told her that the babe would be called Brandon, like the Uncle she had never met. "And what if it's a girl?" she asked; and mother only smiled, lips thinning.

"But don't you want a brother, Arianne?" she asked. "I already have you and Sansa."

"Oh," Arianne said. She never stopped to think that Jon wasn't _really_ Mother's son so she must be wanting a boy, too. For her part Arianne really wanted a sister to play with like she did with Jon, like she had with Lyra Mormont; because Sansa was much too quiet to be interesting, but she figured she could always ask Mother and Father for a sister after Brandon was born.

"Brandon," she agreed. It was a good name, she knew, a Stark name. _Like the Builder_.

But when the babe was born it wasn't a boy named Brandon; but yet another daughter instead, a girl with hair the same color as Arianne's, and eyes like Father's.

_Like Jon's_.

* * *

**-4.**

Little Arya had been born for two moons by the time the war ended, but not even Father's return was enough to make Mother feel better. Uncle Benjen came back too, and a boy called Theon Greyjoy who was to be Father's new ward, but he was older and as quiet as Sansa. Uncle Benjen swept her in an embrace in the yard as soon as he'd dismounted, and then did the same with Jon; but Father had already gone ahead to Mother's chambers.

"It's the babe," Arianne told Uncle Ben, darkly. "She cries all the time and Mother won't get out of bed since _so_ long, she doesn't even go to see Sansa anymore, and I _hate her_."

Even Jon, who never talked to Arianne's mother, was worried. He had even gone up to her rooms with Arianne once, fully expecting to be screamed at, but Lady Catelyn had barely looked at him. She never seemed to look at anyone, truly. Arianne was scared, as much as she had been when Father had gone to war, and more. _Father could fight the Ironborns_, she had told Jon that day, quietly. _But Mother has no one to fight, she's just_ sick.

"Is Mother dying?" she asked Benjen, and could feel the tears prickling at the corner of her eyes; and her uncle made a sad face and took a breath, like Maester Luwin did before explaining something really complicated.

"Ari…" Uncle Ben began, softly. "Your mother is not dying, she is just sick, but it will go away. I promise."

It did, somewhat; and a fortnight later mother was out of bed and bright-eyed at the feast Father had to celebrate the end of the war. She smiled the whole time, until the moment Father asked for some silence and announced that Uncle Benjen would be married in a few moons' time. Her smile fell some then, and Arianne though she looked sad; but she never got around to ask Mother why, because she had more important things to think about. Like the fact that she couldn't see Jon anywhere, that Benjen hadn't told her a thing.

"I didn't know you were betrothed," she told him. "Are you going to leave Winterfell now?" Uncle Benjen was her favorite after Jon, the only one she could count on when Mother and Father were busy, and she couldn't believe he was leaving again.

He didn't meet her eyes. "It wasn't…" he began; then stopped. "I am nine-and-ten, Ari," he told her, gently. "Ned was already married when he was my age. And in case…"

"In case what?" she asked; but he did not answer.

The day after the feast Arianne went looking for Jon. "Where _were_ you?" she asked him. "Did you know that Uncle Benjen will be married?"

Her brother looked miserable. "I know," he said. "Did you know that I am to leave Winterfell?"

"Don't be stupid," she told him. "You are not."

He was, Arianne learned soon enough. Jon would be a page with Lord Manderly at White Harbor and, eventually, a squire. "And even a knight," Father told her. "Like Ser Rodrick."

"Can't he be a knight if he stays here?" she asked him. "Please? I like Jon."

She wouldn't have known what to do with her days otherwise. They took their lessons with the maester together, only being separated when she went to the septa's rooms and Jon to the practice yard; and then they would play together in the godswood, talking of everything and nothing, of all the things they did while they were apart. Arianne had taught Jon to dance by the weirwood tree, and he had showed her how to hold a sword like the guardsmen did; and she couldn't believe that now there would be no Jon to be with.

"Your mother feels that is time you start to associate with girl your own age," Father said, not unkindly. "Sansa will start taking lessons with Septa Mordane next year, you know, and Jeyne Poole, and perhaps we could ask Lord Kastark to send his daughter –"

"– I don't want stupid Jeyne Poole." Arianne told her father. She didn't want Sansa either, not to spend time with. Sansa was just a child, and _boring_. "And Sansa is _four_. I want Jon!"

But her brother left Winterfell for White Harbor only a week after that; and then it was Uncle Benjen's turn, to marry fourteen-year-old Dacey Mormont and go live in some stupid holdfast two days away from Winterfell, and to have a son named Rickard Stark so shortly after the wedding to make all the chambermaids in the castle giggle at how _scandalous_ it was.

But it was all for nothing, in the end. Brandon Stark, her long-awaited brother, was finally born during Arianne's seventh year, six months after Uncle Benjen's son. She was old enough to understand now; old enough that she knew Mother had finally the heir she'd always wanted, a boy heir because Arianne wasn't enough, had never been enough.

And there she remained, in Winterfell, alone.

* * *

**-3.**

Arianne never forgave her mother for sending Jon away; and the worst part was that Lady Catelyn didn't seem to realize, busy as she was fussing around newborn Brandon.

_Like he's better than me_, she longed to tell Jon, _even if he's just a babe_.

But there was no Jon to talk with, no one to confide in; and Arianne started to think she might go crazy with boredom. She took her lessons with Maester Luwin alone now, if one did not count the few times Theon Greyjoy joined in. She didn't, for the simple fact that the boy never talked. Two of his brothers were dead, Father had explained her, but Arianne could not see what she could do about it.

At eight years old she decided to write a memory, like the ones from the old Targaryen kings that she knew were conserved at the Citadel; for no other reasons that she had nothing better to do. Septa Mordane chided when she told her, saying that inch and papers were not to be wasted for a child's game; but Maester Luwin only chuckled and told her that this way she would improve her penmanship, at least.

Arianne made an effort to write at least two pages every week, trying to make her letters look as beautiful as those in Father's books; if only to show her septa that she wasn't a child playing games. It was boring, but not as boring as trying to learn how to play the bells.

"You spend so many hours on these books," Maester Luwin told her once, "you remind me of when I was at the Citadel."

Arianne felt a surge of interest at that. "Do you think I could go at the Citadel?" Mother was always saying how she would have to go South one day; and Oldtown _was_ South.

But the maester shook his head. "They only accept men, to become maesters," he gave her a smile. "You _don't_ want to become a maester, don't you Arianne?"

It was meant to be a joke, she knew. Of course she didn't want to be a maester, with their ugly grey robes and heavy chains; but it wasn't as if she could choose. _Just like I can't be heir to Winterfell_.

Something must have shown on her face, because Luwin continued. "Or maybe you want to be a septa of the Faith? Septa Arianne?"

She laughed at that, like he'd meant her to; because the idea was nothing short of preposterous. Arianne Stark in a septa's robes, praying to the Seven and teaching young ladies how to be demure in public.

At ten years of age, Arianne was all but demure. She had a love for dancing and singing and loud music, no matter that she could not play half as well as Sansa did. She liked the bright cloths that she had Jon send her from White Harbor, Theon Greyjoy's bawdy jokes, and riding with a saddle like a man. Arianne liked her uncle's wife, Lady Dacey, because she knew how to use an axe and had been trained in fighting like a man; and trading letters with Wynafryd Manderly, Jon's friend who would one day be the lady of White Harbor, with her family's blessing. _Unlike me, _she knew; but the thought was not quite as bitter as it had once been, if only because her brother Bran was such a sweet child that it was impossible to resent him for anything.

Arianne liked the Old Gods as well, though she wasn't as devoted as her father or her half-brother were. She liked the thought of having a faith that was only theirs, of the North, not shared with anyone else; of having fearsome gods of red and white that had been once worshipped with the blood of the enemies, and all the stories that Father liked to forget but Arianne had learned by heart from Old Nan and Maester Luwin's books. She read a lot, even the books she didn't yet understand, of her family's past and of battles fought by men now long gone; of the Dance of the Dragons and Queen Rhaenyra and of the ladies of Dorne who ruled in their own right.

Septa Mordane had tried to tell her not to read so much at first, and Arianne had ignored her thinking her words some Southron silliness, like her mother's shock at seeing her riding in breeches, but the septa had been right, Arianne realized soon enough. "You'll lose yourself in those stories of yours, child," the septa had told her when she had been seven; and Arianne had not listened. "To the point when you will no longer care for the world around you."

_And perhaps I do_, Arianne realized, a month or so before her eleventh birthday. Her life in Winterfell was nothing but perpetual boredom now, and she had started to hate how pointless it all was. She was supposed to be the daughter of a Great House, but even the children of landed knights in the South saw more excitement than she did. _I could ask Father to send me to Bear Island, at least_. She would like it there, Arianne was sure.

* * *

**-2.**

That was the year her mother had another son, little Rickon, and the year Jon came to visit after so many years away. He was no longer a page, but a squire for Ser Marlon Manderly, and everyone said he would become a knight in no time; but Arianne had always known Jon could do well in anything he chose to.

It was odd to have him back again, after so long; and her siblings seemed so fascinated by this older brother they had never really known. Only Sansa, who had been old enough to remember Lady Catelyn's avoidance of Jon, kept to herself; but Sansa had always had her friend Jeyne to play with and perhaps it was for the best. Arya and Bran instead followed him everywhere instead, to Arianne's annoyance.

"They barely gave me the time of the day before you arrived," she informed Jon with all the disdain she could muster, which wasn't much. "And now look!"

Bran informed Jon, in complete seriousness, that one day he would be a knight as well, and showed him how he could climb everywhere with barely any effort. Arya, for her part, was fascinated by Jon's tales of Ser Marlon, and begged him to show her how to use a sword.

"Do you mean that Arianne never told you how?" he said in mock seriousness, and Arianne saw her little sister's eyes widen when she looked at her. They had never been particularly close, her and Arya, five years too much of a difference at their ages, sharing a mutual understanding but not much else; but now there was something close to reverence in Arya's eyes.

Arianne laughed. "I haven't done it in years," she explained to Jon. "Father wouldn't let me, and I had no one to steal Ser Rodrick's practice swords."

Lord Eddard was more than content to let her ride, and practice her archery if she wished, as his sister Lyanna had; but nothing else. Arianne had her grandmother Minisa's body, with more breast at eleven than her aunt had at fifteen, and found the bow to be the most uncomfortable weapon ever designed by man.

"I don't even like your sword fighting," she told both Jon and Arya. "What's the point in using swords for a woman?" Dacey had explained to her that women were much too short to hope to win against a man, and proceeded to teach her how to use a knife instead. "You should meet Uncle Benjen's wife, Jon," she said. "You'll like her."

But in the end, they barely had time to meet each other. Jon had been in Winterfell for no more than a week when Lord Eddard heard of how Lord Jorah Mormont had sold two men into slavery for coins, and fled Westeros in fear of retribution. Maege Mormont was the new Lady of Bear Island and Dacey her heir; and both she and Benjen had to leave. _It takes a fortnight from Winterfell to Bear Island_, Arianne realized, _with a fresh horse and a fast boat_.

She had gone years without seeing Jon, and wondered if the same would be true for Benjen now.

* * *

**-1.**

When Arianne Stark was twelve years of age, she became a woman; and didn't particularly see the appeal of it at first.

It was just messy, she decided after two months of it, and had caused the longest conversation she could ever remember having with her mother, _and_ one from her septa; not to mention Father's sideways glances that told her that he knew and wouldn't talk about it. Arianne was only glad that there had been no talk of marriage as of yet. After all, no other lady her age in the North was betrothed, except for Alys Karstark, and Arianne's own had married at eight–and–ten and had been the first one to tell her that there was no rush.

Being a woman had been nothing but an hindrance for the first few months, until the day she pierced it all together. The occasional comment she overheard from Theon, strangely flattering even if it wasn't supposed to; the appreciative looks of stableboys and men-at-arm alike; the pleasant curve of her breasts when she looked down at her body.

_I like it_, she decided, staring at herself critically in the looking mirror one night after her bath, the glowing of the candles softening the contours of her body. It was a simple truth but a deep one; and the next morning when Arianne left her room for the day she did so with a newfound confidence. She was Arianne Stark; she could ride better than many men and read as well as a maester; and she was beautiful.

Arianne was three–and–ten when Septa Mordane deemed both Sansa and Jeyne old enough to be instructed in their womanly duties; and Arianne had to listen to the whole speech again. She wondered how it would be when it was Arya's turn.

"But how does it work?" Sansa asked, cheeks flushed. "I mean, how can it…"

"That is for your husband to show you," the septa said. "But I can promise you it will only hurt the once."

Jeyne Poole looked still mildly scared at that, so Septa Mordane amended. "And not even then if you are accustomed to riding or... strenuous activities." Sansa wasn't much of a rider but Jeyne was; and the words seemed to calm her some.

_Should that calm me, too?_ Arianne hated the idea of showing herself weak, even if it was to her husband on the night of their wedding. The women of her stories hadn't been weak; Queen Rhaenyra hadn't, and neither had the Queen Danelle, the She-wolf of Winterfell two hundred years before the dragons came. _I won't be, either_.

The next few months saw Jon's excited letter claiming that he would soon become a knight, and Lord Karstark's visit to Winterfell, accompanied by two of his sons. Arianne danced with both of them in turns, Harrion, the heir to Karhold; and Torrhen, the handsome second son. They looked at her like no other man had before, her father's men all too scared to be caught looking at the Lord's daughter to give her anything more than casual glances. Arianne liked the attention, she decided, the taste of wine and laughter in the air.

_This is what I want my life to be like_, she thought.

That night her cheeks were flushed when she made it back to her rooms, and Arianne opened the window to let the cool wind in. She could not sleep, she realized, still too excited from the night; and if she closed her eyes she could still feel the sounds of cups clinching together and the music they had played. She let one hand wander to her body, absent-mindedly at first, lazily; until she fully realized what she was doing. Then her actions took a renewed determination, a purpose.

Arianne let one hand slid under her smallclothes, the other drawing the covers closer to her chest, cold air on her face. She found her folds, stroking, almost daring herself to. _That's for your husband to do_, she could almost imagine her septa telling her, her _mother_ telling her. _I am for myself to do whatever I want_, she thought, as if in answer; and in her own way, she felt brave. Arianne felt a faint twinge of… something pleasant as she slid one finger around, tentatively; and she could still hear voices when she closed her yes, but it was Sansa's voice now, and her friend Jeyne. _Will it hurt?_ the tone was every bit as anxious as it had been that day. _Will it hurt?_

She knew what should come then, as hazy as her knowledge was. She let two of her fingers slide into her core then, suddenly, hastily, and winced. It hurt.

Perhaps she had been to abrupt, as Mother always said she was, or perhaps there was something wrong with her. _Or perhaps we're just not made for such things_. But they had to, or else how could men find it enjoyable? And some women did as well, whores, she had heard as much. _Does this means I'm not a maid anymore?_ she wondered, and she didn't know. But there should be blood then, and when she held out her fingers under the light of the moon there was nothing there.

Arianne remembered more of her septa's words then, the ones that had made Jeyne Poole scared in the first place. _Is for your husband to have your maiden's blood_, the woman had said; but now Arianne felt a surge of defiance at the thought. _It's for no man to have a part of me_, she decided, and brought her hand down under the covers again, faster now that she knew what she was looking for, only one finger now because it would be easier; digging and searching inside of herself for something that was not there, deeper and deeper and faster until it hurt, but she figured it was a good thing. _I'm hurting for myself and for no man_.

She fell asleep burning with pain and fury and shame, and safe in the knowledge that there was no blood to be found anywhere; nothing of hers than any man could take for his own. Arianne walked through Winterfell that day with the assurance that she was no maid; not like her mother would have wanted her to be at least, and wondered if anyone could see anything different in her.

They couldn't.

Arianne liked the idea; liked to know that there was nothing of her that had changed. She was still Arianne Stark, pretty and bold and stubborn, and that had nothing to do with what her husband would find on her wedding night.

Arianne Stark lost her maidenhead in every sense of the word at fourteen, to an handsome sailor in White Harbor whose name she had never bothered to learn. He was from Essos, and spoke the Common Tongue with an accent she could barely understand. It was the ideal, she told herself, the first and last chance she would have to go about by herself in a place where no one knew her face, where she didn't have to fear that whatever man she chose would go bragging to her father the next day in hope to find himself wedded to a Stark of Winterfell.

After all, she had discarded Theon Greyjoy for that very reason.

It was the strangest experience of her life to date, messy and confusing and not at all enjoyable; but it was one more thing she had done by herself, and she liked the feeling of it. The rest of her visit to White Harbor was far more entertaining; being showed around by Jon, meeting Wynafryd Manderly face to face for the first time since they were children, and seeing her favorite brother kneel and rise as a knight of the realm.

She asked Jon to come back to Winterfell with her, for a few months at least. Father had told him the same in the letter she had brought him, Arianne knew it; and Jon smiled at her and told he that yes, of course he would.

"One year," he said. "The gods only know what will happen one year from now."

* * *

**0. (reprise)  
**

Jon Arryn was dead barely a couple moons later; and it wasn't long after that King Robert came to Winterfell with his queen and sons and daughter and the whole court.

Arianne herself had to walk down the length of Winterfell's Great Hall at the arm of the Crown Prince, who looked more Lannister than Baratheon and walked with an arrogant stance that was almost embarrassing to watch. Sansa thought he was dreamy, of course; she was more than welcomed to him.

Arianne suspected that the king had discussed something about betrothals with Father; and she could not bring herself to warm to Prince Joffrey, who was tall enough to peek inside Arianne's neckline, and had done so often enough that she had to force herself to keep her smile in place until they could sit at the table.

She was only five seats down from the queen, who turned a few times to look at her with a glimpse in her eyes that made Arianne uncomfortable. She envied Jon, who was sitting with the other knights of the house down enough to be unnoticed, his white direwolf under the table. Arianne had to leave hers in her rooms instead, the grey pup she still didn't know what to name. She tried to think of one for the whole evening, trying not to look in the queen's direction, or Prince Joffrey's, or anyone…

"I don't want to marry Joffrey," she told her father two days later, not caring that a lady wasn't supposed to speak this way. "Sansa likes him," Arianne offered, eventually, trying to sound calmer than she felt.

"Please."

* * *

**This got too** long, as usual, so it has been split. Into two or three parts, I don't know yet, depends on how long it gets. It will be completed by the end of the month. More things

1. Yes, I do realize that the Arianne/Jon relationship has some Cersei/Jaime undertones. It wasn't my intention, and there's nothing going on - though it would be interesting if it was.  
2. I tried to keep as much of Arianne's character intact as possible, considering the differences in her upbringing. Did it work? Hope so.  
3. Catelyn is my no means supposed to come across as a bitch, or weak, or a combination of the two. I tried showing all the implications of birthing three daughters in a row in a misogynistic society, and the medieval version of post-partum depression that came with it. Same goes for Arianne's ventures into sex being.. well, unsexy. Also, possibly creepy.  
4. Should this be rated M? Do let me know, I'm terrible with ratings - comes with being European I guess. Bah.


End file.
